Computers

Every once in a while, I get the urge to play an old game. Lately, I've been executing demons with whirlwind attacks and glacial spikes. But, with one added twist...

Diablo II predates the glitz and glam of wide-screen LCD monitors. It's kind of shocking to say, but Diablo II is now 11 years old. ELEVEN. Madness isn't it? I remember pre-ordering my uber nerd Collector's Edition Diablo II from Electronics Boutique. The years have been kind to this oldie but goodie. A couple of years ago, some enterprising geeks managed to get Diablo II to run in ridiculously high resolutions using a special add on. Originally, the game was played on 4:3 monitors at the eye popping resolution of 640x480. To put it in perspective for the non geeks, my Motorola Droid has a higher resolution than that! Today, you can run Diablo II with practically any resolution you can throw at it.

Personally, I'm running it at 1920x1200. This horribly unbalances the game. You now have the ability to see AI enemies long before they see you. It was enough that Blizzard themselves will ban your battle.net account if they catch you using it. Even so, it's been a good trip down memory lane. The ability to play it at higher resolutions adds just enough incentive to dust it off, and spend the evening hacking away with my mouse.

If you yourself would like to give it a try, here's a quick and easy download with all of the tools you need to get yourself going.

1) Download my handy dandy file and unzip it to a safe place.2) Install a fresh copy of Diablo II.3) Instead of playing immediately or performing an update via battle.net, go back to the unzipped files and look for D2Patch_112a.zip. Unzip the exe file inside and run it.4) Now unzip the D2MultiRes-v102.zip file and extract the contents to the Diablo II folder within Program Files.5) Run D2MultiResGame.exe in the Diablo II folder. Close out the game.6) Inside the Diablo II folder, you should now have a D2MultiResLog.txt file. Open it up and pick the resolution you want to play at. Remember the Display Mode number. In my case, it was 29 for 1920x1200.7) Run Regedit or regedt32 and go over to this key. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Blizzard Entertainment\Diablo II\D2RMRes 8) Double click it and select decimel in the radio button option. Key in the mode number in the box. In my case, 29.9) Close out the registry editor, and relaunch D2MultiResGame.exe. Your game should now popup in high resolution glory.

But again, you can't go on battle.net. For a few reasons.

1) the 1.12a patch is not the latest patch level. Far from it. If you go onto battle.net, you'll be asked to upgrade before you get on.2) D2MultiRes doesn't work with anything but patch 1.12a "I think". Maybe a lower patch level, but certainly not any higher.3) If Battle.net sees you using this add on, it will ban your account. Not a good thing. You are effectively cheating when you use this. They don't like cheaters. Not sure how that would happen since it doesn't work with the current patch version, but it's better not to poke the sleeping beast.

One thing I discovered, is that you don't need to own the Lord of Destruction expansion pack. You may not have the ability to change the resolution in game, but who cares. It's one easy registry entry away.